


Ready/Able

by brocanteur



Category: Skins (UK)
Genre: F/F, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-22
Updated: 2010-03-22
Packaged: 2017-10-15 09:48:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/159568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brocanteur/pseuds/brocanteur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Shoved face-first and blind with fury, Emily stumbles through a path toward detente." Spoilers for all of series 4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ready/Able

Shoved face-first and blind with fury, Emily stumbles through a path toward detente. She can't fathom forgiveness yet, can't think past the dark, pulsing wound in her chest. All along she'd been losing a war she hadn't known she was supposed to fight. What she knows now is that none of this has turned out the way she expected.

(And what had she expected, really? What had she been sure would be hers?)

She tells Naomi, "I don't want to be angry anymore," but instead she clutches her anger, guards it, nourishes it. Naomi is quiet, watchful, but sometimes Emily catches a look, a certain impatience in her gaze that says, "Why did you take me back, if you weren't ever going to forgive me?"

Who else to hate? Not Sophia. Emily can't hate someone who's dead—who, worse, gave up her life because she couldn't have what for Emily is now irreparably broken. There are times, when bitterness burns her throat, that Emily almost says to Naomi, "Did she kill herself because she couldn't be with you, or was it because she realised you weren't the person she'd convinced herself she was in love with? Was she fucking disappointed, do you think?"

She never says the words, but they're always there, part of the arsenal of weapons sitting on the tip of her tongue.

—

"What can I do?"

"I don't know."

"I'll do anything."

"Yes, but I don't know what that is."

"Anything is anything, Ems. I mean it. I really—"

"Go back and change it, then. Go back, and don't fuck us over this time."

"Emily."

"Then anything _isn't_ anything, is it? You can't go back, and I can't forget, Naomi."

—

"Ours" _isn't,_ and for a time Emily sleeps alone—fitfully, waking often from dreams of Sophia passing by on the stairs, on her way to the club balcony from which she would dive. (In Emily's dreams she floats to the ground like a petal falling from a bough, her body blooming red when it touches ground.) The nightmares are gauzy impressions—like old film, scratched and faded, jumping from scene to scene, flashing forward and backward between Sophia's life and her death, between the moments she might've shared with Naomi (all of Emily's conjectures, all of Emily's worst fears, made manifest), and that final exit she made certain they would all witness. Sometimes it isn't Sophia who falls from the balcony, but Emily herself. Emily who climbs the railing and looks down and thinks, "What will I miss? Who will care?"

—

Naomi settles in with grey—her granite-coloured cardigan is constantly wrapped around her shoulders, cinched loose at the waist. She smokes ceaselessly, pins her hair back and keeps her face bare. She spends hours with the same book and hardly ever turns a page. Wariness is her constant companion.

They speak in perfunctory sentences and in sighs, in the half-formed grunts of people who've lost all use for words. It's a wonder, then, whenever Naomi says anything. When she turns with a wrinkled nose from the refrigerator and says, "The milk's gone bad." Or when she finds one of Emily's socks buried behind a sofa cushion and tosses it at her as she smiles an ordinary smile. "Missing something, then?" The quotidian catches Emily off-guard.

When Emily wades into the domestic she says things like, "Flip the cap down on the toothpaste after you've used it, will you? This shit is everywhere." Or, "Would it fucking kill you to put away the laundry after I've done the washing up?" More often she keeps her mouth shut and tries to remember when it was she didn't care about such things, when minor irritations were drowned in joy.

 

—

It isn't that, in Emily's heart—in the depths of her heart, in the places that ache with reminders of another time and what was promised—she doesn't still feel the faint pulsations of love. She'd just like to survive this with as few scars as possible, and they say it's best not to pick at scabs.

She's in the middle of revision (she's put off her coursework too long—distracted, always distracted) when Naomi sits across from her on the bed, holding out a cup of tea. Emily ignores it.

"You've been in here all day."

The blue in Naomi's eyes sends Emily's blood rushing. She forces herself to look away, focusses so hard on the page she's reading, the words begin to blur together. "Been busy."

"I can see that."

Emily pretends to read for minutes, but Naomi doesn't move.

"What do you want?" Emily finally asks, edging into exasperation.

"Tea?"

"No."

"Emily—"

The book finds the floor, and she grabs the tea, takes a careless drink that burns her tongue. "Shit. _Shit._ " She sets the cup aside, not caring when some sloshes over into the saucer. Naomi just stares. "Fuck, _what?_ What, Naomi?"

"I'm trying, Em. I'm really fucking trying, you know?"

Emily knows. She knows, and isn't sure when that will be good enough. Sighing, she scrapes her teeth along her tongue, grateful for the sting.

—

Nowhere to go, so she goes everywhere she can that isn't home, that isn't _ours._

 

It's late November—cold and wet—and Emily has been riding round Bristol for hours. Her Vespa's nearly out of petrol, she's hungry, and her clothes are soaked through when she spots Effy standing outside a pub. She parks her scooter, pulls down her dripping goggles, and says, "Need a lift?"

"Looks rather dangerous." Effy takes a drag of her cigarette, shivers. "Are you a good driver?"

Emily laughs. "No. No, I don't think so."

Flicking the fag into the road, Effy smiles. "Let's go then."

 

It's not till she's got the door open and they're well inside that Emily realises Naomi isn't home. When she exhales audibly, Effy throws her a curious look.

"Something to drink?" Emily says, avoiding the question in Effy's eyes.

Effy nods, dropping onto the sofa as she pulls her cigarette case from the pocket of her threadbare jacket. She pulls out two spliffs and, when Emily settles beside her and puts a bottle of vodka between them, she lights one and hands it to Emily.

They don't talk for a very long time.

When Emily's got a proper buzz going Effy says, her voice languid and slow, "Better now?"

"Mm."

"It's not what you thought it would be."

Emily blinks, drowsy. Her limbs are heavy. She brings the bottle to her mouth and drinks before replying. "What isn't?"

"Being with Naomi."

The words, so flatly put, make Emily laugh abruptly. Her throat hurts. "No," she says, setting her fingers against the side of her face, pressing them into her temple. "That's a fucking understatement, I think."

"Did you think it'd be perfect?"

"No, of course not."

"So it didn't come as a surprise when she fucked up?" Effy brings the spliff to her lips. Her hair is still damp—strands of it cling to the side of her neck. When Emily doesn't answer, she presses on. "She did fuck up, didn't she?"

Emily takes another hard drink of vodka. There's a now familiar tightness in her chest, and she soothes it away with several more swallows. Her voice is hoarse when she says, "She cheated. She fucked...someone else."

"Ah." Effy gently tugs the bottle out of Emily's hand, her expression pitying. "Sorry."

"I loved her."

"And you don't now?"

The darkness that comes when Emily closes her eyes doesn't provide any comfort. It hasn't for a very long time. "All I see when I look at her is what she did."

"Some of us," Effy murmurs, "need second chances. Third and fourth, even."

"I'm here, aren't I? I'm fucking here."

"Are you?"

Naomi arrives a half hour later, carrying a bag of take-away. She looks relieved when she sees Effy. "You should stay for a bit," she says, and Emily recognises the plea in her voice. _It's come to this,_ she thinks. _A shield between us, a wall to keep the peace and block salvos._

After dinner, they sit out in the garden. It's a cool, clear night, the kind of evening that used to end with Emily and Naomi curled up on a blanket, making up names for imaginary constellations, listening to Gina's old records—Indian music and Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix's guitar wailing while they smoked weed and snogged and didn't care what the neighbours thought. _(But first, are you experienced?)_ Now they center their conversation round Effy, who hardly talks at all. She smokes and nods and makes sounds of assent or denial, she laughs at Naomi's jokes, which seem to come more easily the more she's had to drink. There's a renewed fire in her pale eyes and Emily realises, reluctantly, that she's missed it.

"What made you move out of your mum's house?" Effy asks Naomi.

"I needed some fucking privacy, yeah?" Naomi looks at Emily, briefly. "More than ever I needed privacy."

Effy's smile is polite. "That can be lovely—pretending you're each other's world."

"Yes, well, some fantasies are easier to sustain than others," Emily says, watching as Naomi's face falls. "Isn't that right, darling?"

Naomi lights a cigarette. "Yeah. Right," she answers dully. And just like that, the spark fades. She sinks back into the chair, bare legs crossed, and stares up at the starry sky.

Effy glances between them, letting her gaze linger on Emily as she continues. "And then you moved in."

"I moved in, and this," Emily waves her hand in a grand gesture, "became ours." The brutality in her voice surprises her. (So much for shields.) She sucks her lips into her mouth and shakes her head, sorry but not quite enough.

"Ours," Naomi repeats, coughing. (A direct hit.)

After a moment of awkward silence, Effy holds up the empty bottle of vodka. "More?"

"We've only got wine left, I think."

"That'll do."

 

They drink until they can't anymore, and finally Naomi and Emily make a wobbly retreat to their room, leaving Effy passed out on the sofa.

Maybe it's the alcohol, but when they're alone Emily can't stop staring at Naomi—at the brightness in her eyes, at the casual anger she spots in them, only for a moment, when their gazes collide. They undress slowly, watching one another as they stand on opposite sides of the bed. When Naomi doesn't hide her frank appraisal, Emily discovers that the tension unravelling in her body isn't anger so much as need speeding hotly through her veins.

"It's war, then?" Naomi asks, raising an eyebrow. "Does it count as such if I've already fucking surrendered?"

"And why have you?"

"Am I supposed to fight, Emily? Fight for what? Fight with you, against you? Christ, I don't even know anymore."

"You were supposed to fight _for_ me. Isn't that what you fucking said? _'I'll do anything.'_ " Emily says the words so violently, she can barely get them out.

Naomi's cheeks grow pink and she pushes her wild hair out of her face as she turns away. "I've put up with—" she begins to say before stopping abruptly. "I've been waiting for you, Emily. I've been fucking waiting."

"Waiting for _what?_ "

"For you to let it go. Jesus, when—"

Emily interrupts, livid. "You don't get to ask that. This isn't on _your_ fucking schedule. How dare you?"

"Am I supposed to sit around while you punish me for all time? Forever and ever, is that it? Is that how it goes? At what point is it bloody _enough?_ "

"You're drunk."

"And so what? So what?" Naomi says, inhaling sharply as she blinks back tears. Emily feels her own dangerously close to spilling. She ruthlessly bites the inside of her cheek to keep it from happening. "Em, show me _something_ , please. Tell me you want me, at least. Tell me—"

Emily crosses the distance between them without thinking, knees on the mattress as she takes Naomi by the back of the neck and kisses her roughly. "Fucking _stop_ ," she breathes, mouth still pressed to Naomi's, her heart racing.

"Em—"

"Don't talk. I don't want to talk, okay?"

Naomi nods, already reaching, touching.

They fuck in light so dim, Emily can only make out the outline of Naomi's body. There's little sound and Naomi is tentative until Emily pleads for more, thinking every kiss could be a beginning or an end. The contradictions rage, and Emily drowns them out with her mouth and her fingers and the sound of her blood rushing through her ears. When Naomi settles between her thighs, she feels a flash of momentary resentment, but she swallows it down, breathes into the back of her hand as Naomi presses a wet kiss to her belly, mutters a weak "I love you" against her skin. "Emily, I love you."

"I—" Emily exhales, tangling her fingers in Naomi's hair. "I know."

—

Christmas seems to arrive far too quickly, and Emily spends it with her family, sleeping in her old room for the first time in months, pressed tightly against Katie.

"You should come home," Katie whispers. It's still dark out, too early for them to be awake. "It's sort of shit without you."

"I can't."

"Why can't you?"

Everything in the room is familiar and strange, objects from another life. Emily isn't home anymore. She isn't quite sure she has one. "I'm not a loser, Katie."

"Who the fuck said you were?"

"I can make this work. Mum thinks I can't, but I can. I have to."

Katie sits up and gives her a quizzical look. "What are you talking about? I thought—"

Emily interrupts with a quick shake of her head. "It's fine."

"She's good for you, isn't she? That's what you said, Ems."

Emily remembers. She remembers saying quite a lot before finding out about Sophia. "She loves me."

Katie relaxes, and rolls her eyes and Emily is grateful, for once, that they so rarely understand one another. "You're the lucky one, yeah? You were always the lucky one."

 

New Year's Eve is spent at a house party where everyone's more or less drunk before ten o'clock. Emily isn't; Emily's more sober than she's been in a long time. She lights a cigarette and waits for the worst year of her life to end. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Effy and Freddie wrapped up in each other, tries to make herself remember what that was like, and wonders whether she should envy or pity them for what's sure to come. As she watches them, the countdown to 2010 begins and by the time they get to the five second mark people are screaming with excitement.

"Three! Two! One!"

"Happy New Year," Emily whispers to herself, hears the words echo as someone's mouth finds the back of her neck.

"We can start fresh, you know?" Naomi says turning Emily around with a gentle push of the shoulder. There isn't time to answer, there isn't time to think about what it would really take to start over. Naomi just kisses her—slowly, deeply. Emily aches.

It should feel like a new beginning, but it still feels a lot like the past Emily wishes she'd never lost.

 

—

It's not so easy, starting fresh. The cycle keeps on, and Emily finds herself unable to break out of it—the hate and the love the hate and the love. Happiness is fleeting, but so powerful that whenever she glimpses it she convinces herself it isn't time yet to let go. And still she can't forgive.

Getting even, she thinks, might help. Maybe then she'd regain some control over her life.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

—

Katie asks, once she's found out, once everyone's found out, "Why the fuck are you still living there? Why've you been there the whole time, Emily?"

"None of your fucking business."

"But it is. You're miserable all the time, yeah? I mean, you obviously hate her—"

"Do I?"

"Oh, come off it. You should see the way you look at her, Ems. Like you want to run her through, or something. That's not love, it can't be."

"And what do you know about it? What do you know about anything, Katie?"

It's the pity Emily can't abide, Katie's eyes turning soft and her mouth dropping open as she looks down at her hands and shakes her head. "Christ, I'm just trying to fucking help you. She cheated on you, and so you're punishing her. So tell me, how good does that make you feel?"

Emily's chest hitches. All she seems to do now is cry, and she hates it—it frightens her, how easily the tears come, how any little push topples her. More than that, she's frightened by what will happen when she's out of tears. What will she do then?

—

Mandy is an accident, a stroke of fate—a girl with large eyes and full lips and a relentlessness Emily finds intoxicating.

"I'm with someone," Emily makes sure to say, the very first time they meet. She won't make the same mistakes Naomi did. "I have a girlfriend."

"Do you?" Mandy says, smiling behind her drink. "How lovely for her."

"Doubtful," Emily blurts.

And there it starts.

—

The evening Katie knocks on the door, dressed like a demented angel, her wings crooked and her knees bloody, and says, "Effy's fucking slashed her wrists," Emily sags against the doorframe, wishing she were more surprised.

"Why?"

"She's gone mental." Katie half chokes on her reply, and Emily pulls her inside, sits her on the sofa, and goes to find a towel to clean up the blood that is now very obviously not Katie's. Emily makes tea and lets her sister explain, but the story comes out in a mangled rush, and soon it doesn't matter anyway because Katie's stopped talking and started crying into Emily's shoulder.

"What's happening?" Emily whispers, trying very hard to remember when they were all happy.

Were they ever happy?

 

When Naomi comes home, the smell of cider on her breath, Emily tells her the news without preamble. "Effy tried to kill herself."

Naomi stares back, shock registering slowly on her face. "What?"

Emily shrugs and nods, says nothing else because there's nothing to say that would make it any more real.

Katie's wings rest on one side of the sofa, and Naomi's forced to move them aside before she can sit down. "Fuck are these?"

Emily takes a drink of her tea. It's long grown cold. "Katie was in the parade." Trying to make money, trying to help their parents. Something between guilt and envy sticks in Emily's throat. "She's in the bath, washing off the blood."

"Jesus."

"Yeah."

For a moment, someone else's tragedy is greater than their own.

—

"I chased her. I wanted her more than anything I've ever wanted. She was everything."

Mandy looks intently at the harbour, passes the cigarette without even glancing Emily's way. "Whenever you talk about her," she says, exhaling a stream of smoke, "you talk about her like she's dead. Past-tense-Naomi. Did you know that?"

Emily shakes her head. "I told her she's ruined it, but maybe we've ruined each other."

"So get out."

"Mandy, don't."

"You're _seventeen_ , Em. She isn't the end of the line."

 

It isn't much later that JJ talks about trust—seventy-five percent trust he's got, that his girlfriend won't fuck him over, that he isn't being used the way...

Emily realises she doesn't even trust herself to do what's right. Paralysed by doubt, she stays.

 

Naomi's asleep by the time Emily gets home; she's near-wrecked after an evening spent drinking with Mandy and a few of her friends, but sober enough to make it up the stairs and into their room without crashing into anything.

She sits at the edge of the bed, teetering only a bit as she reaches to pull her shoes off. Naomi shifts, eyelids flickering, mouth turning down at the corners. "Em?"

"Yeah," Emily whispers. "It's me."

"You pissed?"

"A bit."

Finally, Naomi opens her eyes, regarding Emily sleepily. Her voice is soft when she says, "Sometimes I'm sure you won't come back, you know?"

"And is that what you want?"

"Be nice, Emily," Naomi responds, wrapping her fingers around Emily's arm, tugging. "Please be nice."

Emily remembers Mandy making a pass at her—hands on her hips, lips at her ear as they danced. Her stomach clenches involuntarily and she is suddenly sorry, so very sorry. She turns clumsily and straddles Naomi's thighs, leans over and kisses her brow. "I'll try."

When she sits up, Naomi's staring hard, her lip caught between her teeth. "It's no use, wishing for things you can't change, is it?"

"Maybe," Emily says, "we should just start with what's possible."

"What's that, then?"

Emily answers with a kiss. "I don't want to be angry anymore," she says, and means it.

—

The house is packed with people—teeming, overflowing—Naomi's downstairs and Mandy's here, now, too close and telling her things she doesn't want to hear.

"Think about it, Em. Think about what you could have if you'd just let go."

"I can't."

"What's holding you to her?"

"Love?"

Mandy laughs and Emily bites into her cheek, clenches her fist. "Is that a question? Oh, Emily."

"Fucking—" Emily takes a breath. "I've made mistakes, too," she says helplessly.

—

"We, we have problems, me and Em, 'cause I was, I was _bad_. That right, Ems?" Emily looks away, out the window. Cook's still out there, staring down at something. Meanwhile, inside the house, everything's crumbling. Emily can only watch, knowing this belongs to her. She's pushed and pushed, watched Naomi fall apart a little at a time. She's been punishing them both, and this is what she gets. It's what she gets. "See, I'm forgiven. It's just been heaven these last months. Fucking _heaven._ "

 

The end, Emily thinks. She runs to their room and cries so hard her throat feels raw afterward; her eyes sting. She isn't sure why she's surprised, doesn't know why she'd expected a different outcome.

When Naomi comes into the room, her eyes cold and unforgiving, Emily thinks it again. _The end._

She doesn't fight it when Naomi crosses the distance between them. She expects words, final words, but instead Naomi kisses her with so much desperation Emily can't help but feel emotion rise up in her chest again. Several times Naomi seems to want to speak but the choked sounds, the mangled syllables, end on Emily's skin.

 

"I love you" comes too late.

—

Except, it doesn't. There is a speech Emily only half-hears through the wild beating of her heart. It's the look on Naomi's face that finally does her in.

(She was already there. Naomi didn't have to say a word.)

—

"She said, if I didn't want you..." Naomi says, trailing off as she leans over to the nightstand and lights another cigarette.

It's later. Much later. There's life in Naomi's eyes again.

"We didn't do anything," Emily says. "I couldn't."

Naomi smiles faintly, taking a drag from her cigarette. She settles back on the pillow, turns her head to stare directly at Emily. "Yeah. I know."

Emily nods, grateful for the shred of trust. It's a beginning for them both. She runs her thumb across Naomi's lips, along the smudged line of her lipstick. "Twelve, really?"

"Whatever love is at that age. Fuck knows."

"You treated me like shit."

"Denial's a powerful thing, Emily."

"Mm." Emily settles in the crook of Naomi's arm. After a long pause she says, "So. India."

"Yeah. Going-a to Goa."

"You're a tit."

"'Course I am. It's why you love me." She kisses the side of Emily's head. Suddenly serious, she asks, "You do, don't you?"

"Yes."

"And it's over, then? Really fucking over?"

"Heaven? I'm sorry, Naomi."

"So am I."

They're quiet for a very long time.

"Now what?" Emily ventures.

"Now, we go to Goa. And we're happy. We'll just be happy, okay?"

"Just like that?"

"I hope so," Naomi says, kissing her. "I really fucking hope so."

Love blooms in Emily's chest and for the first time in forever, she does nothing to tamp it down. It stays there, and it's light—lighter than air.


End file.
